A Study of Breaking something Liquid

A Sound Installation by Janine Schranz and Kristin Weissenberger in collaboration with Zosia Hołubowska.

Opening: Friday, September 5, 2025, 6–10 pm
Sound performance with Zosia Hołubowska: 7:30 pm

Closing: Tuesday, September 9, 2025, 6–10 pm
ES49, Erdbergstraße 49, 1030 Wien

Glass occupies an in-between position in physics: with its irregular crystalline structure and special characteristics, the amorphous material lies somewhere between solid and liquid.
Janine Schranz and Kristin Weissenberger have been exploring this unclassifiability for months.

The starting point was the idea of building an experimental instrument: a drum set made of glass. In numerous trials, they tested different techniques for shaping cymbals from waste glass in a ceramic kiln.
Waste glass—seemingly endlessly available, yet marked by subtle, material-specific traits—moved to the center of their research: Why is there almost no perfectly transparent bottle glass, but rather “50 shades of transparent”?

From an daily perspective, waste glass is nothing but trash; artistically, however, it is an inexhaustible raw material—an inversion of the usual logic of value.
It carries an inherent indeterminacy: neither solid nor liquid, but rather in a state of “supercooled liquid.” This in-betweenness creates a particular tension, reflected also in the working process.

Fragility and breakage were not seen as failure here, but as potential—used to create something new, a principle of “creative destruction” described already by Nietzsche and Benjamin.
From the initial impulse to elevate something as fragile as glass into a percussion instrument, to the necessary shattering of waste glass into fragments and granulates for kiln melting, to the “Archive of Broken Forms” documenting failed attempts, the process turned breaking into a practice of knowledge: breaking open in order to understand.

The result is a room-filling instrument made of glass cymbals. In a specially composed sound performance, electronic musician Zosia Hołubowska makes its fragile-liquid sound body audible.

Still ongoing: 3rd episode of d…MN
Saturday, September 6, 2025 | 18:00–22:00 h Tuesday, September 9, 2025 (Closing) | 18:00–22:00 h

with: Boros Lőrinc (HU), Hamer Körmeling (BE) and Richard Hoeck (AT)
Organised and curated by Olga Mathilde Gärtner, Nana Sorgo und Janina Weißengruber.